Learning to lead a digital strategy: 3 topics for business students

October 13, 2013

Incorporating digital strategy into business plans involves more than simply using social as a media channel. Over the past month I’ve had conversations with leaders in several top notch MBA programs about how to prepare future business leaders for the challenges of engaging audiences, creating business opportunities, and leading teams in the digital world.

What should today’s business students be learning about digital and social? Three key topics:

1. The digital brand experience

How brand experience is conveyed through digital (web, events, social media, communities, etc.)

Aligning digital strategy with business objectives

Driving the brand experience using the many actors engaged in the system (employees, advocates, consumers, etc).

Monitoring the market and integrating digital input with other market intelligence

Measuring impact and relating the impact to business goals

Refining strategy, and deploying through the ecosystem quickly

2. Data-driven CRM

How “customer relationship management” means more than sales automation – determining what data defines the customer/prospect and what meaningful action can be taken on the data by all the people in the system (marketing, sales, service) to service customers and prospects better

Defining meaningful data from digital/social interactions

Correlating digital data sources with traditional data sources for more real-time view of the customer/prospect

Using digital data to understand who else is interacting with the customer/prospect and to service, retain & upsell

3. Collaborative global teaming

How to work collaboratively across teams and cultures using digital spaces

Sharing work, including when to share and what not to share

Working transparently (‘working out loud’), how to build connections across disciplines that lead to innovation and deliberate serendipity

Understanding cultural differences and how they are exhibited in digital interactions

Leading in virtual environments

Leaders who have a strategic understanding of how these 3 topics drive business will have a competitive advantage over those leaders who still think their intern can lead social strategy by managing a Twitter account.